


blame me, I will wear it

by lilith_morgana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone laughs at a whore, my lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blame me, I will wear it

She is a child of the earth and the fields - a beet-child, her mother jokes, popping up in the most unexpected of places. 

They work out there in the fields in the heat, their backs bent and curved, their skin damp and the sleeves of their shirts rolled up and stained, always stained. _Marked_ , she thinks, watching her father's large frame blocking the sun; he grunts as he works, as he slumps down on the ground and wipes the sweat of his forehead with the back of his hand. 

She is just a slip of a girl then, running between the beets and her father's legs; when they rest, she curls up in her mother's arms, placing her fingers over the veins and scars on them. Her mother has skin the colour of the earth and the mud beneath their feet, as though she has just risen from it and will return to it, before long. 

She does return to it before long. 

It darkens then, the world around them and Shae sits at the table in their cottage, watching her father watching nothing, merely staring into the void Mother left. 

“Oh, Shae,” he says, his hands shaking as he serves her soup with onions and beets.

When the long summer fades out and autumn finally comes, Father locks the door and leaves the crop to the crows and the wolves. Shae saves what can be saved, scrubbing and chopping and preserving furiously in the kitchen while her father drinks. 

“Oh, _Shae_ ,” he says again, his mouth close to hers and his breath full of ale and grief that has twisted him into someone else. “You look so much like your mother.”

Perhaps she says _no, no I am not her_ ; perhaps she says nothing at all. 

But the following morning, while the sun burns behind the mountains and hills, Shae runs and it feels like she is running for her life.

*

“I keep count,” a woman tells her once.

Shae takes her mug of ale in both hands, palms curled around it. “Why?” she asks. 

The woman – Moira, one of the older girls in this place, no longer a girl at all actually and much kinder than she is comely – shrugs, refilling both of their mugs. 

“I've always liked numbers.”

They laugh. In the empty room, the sound of it as it dances between the walls is the sound of something brittle and hollow.

*

There is one knight in Lannisport who tells her she has eyes like the moon and fucks her on the stairs leading up to Casterly Rock ( _“we'll take our chances while the lion himself is away”_ ); two sailor brothers who claim they will take her with them as they leave in the morning but never do (she waits by the docks all the same, cursing her own unbroken hope); there are three soldiers and too much wine and she wakes up bruised but blissfully empty of memories; there is one high-born lord who tugs at her hair and cries her name and tells her he will have her killed if she falls pregnant.

There is an imp with an arrogant smile and an enormous fortune who offers her a list of things in return for her company. 

Shae nods her agreement in such a manner that is doesn't feel quite like servitude and he softens, slipping into the shadows of self-delusion that usually only come afterwards. She watches with interest. 

When he's had her for the first time, he kisses her. A soft gentle kiss on her forehead, nothing like the demanding kisses from before, and she pulls away, startled. 

Later she will learn that it's the kisses he truly pays her for.

*

“Lannisters always pay their debts – and their whores, apparently!” Moira laughs as Shae turn in front of her, a new dress clinging to her body in such a perfect fit she can't stop touching the fabric that is crisp and smooth under her fingertips; she knows she will never again own such a perfect garment. “Is it a Lannister?”

Shae nods. 

“Is it the imp?" she asks later, as they have settled with plates of food and mugs of ale. "It is the imp, isn't it?”

Shae nods again. “Yes.”

“A pity the Kingslayer isn't looking for company, eh?” Moira reaches for a piece of meat on her plate. “They say he's just like his lord father, only looking at steel and maps. It's never the handsome ones.”

“When the imp has paid his debts long enough, we can get away from here,” Shae says, looking over Moira's shoulder. “Buy an inn in the Riverlands. Just you and me.”

Shae has a wooden box underneath her bed at the brothel, a box that is tucked inside a large pack and wrapped in old dirty sheets that cannot be suspected to hide anything. Inside it lies her entire fortune, such as it is. She has shown it to Moira, has revealed the gold in it, not yet enough to cover all the wood but in time, she tells herself, in time it will. _You told me to keep count._

“Oh sweetling,” Moira looks sad for a moment before she smiles again. “Of course we shall.”

“But in the meantime, one could do worse than the Lannisters.” She grins. The ale has spread into her blood, rests soundly in her belly. 

“It could have been worse,” Moira agrees.

*

“It could have been worse,” she tells him once, playfully, biting the corner of her lips and kissing the corner of his.

He scoffs. “Have you not yet been introduced to my lord father?”

Shae shrugs, letting him undress her slowly, bit by bit with his mouth and tongue. “He seems crueller than mine, which means he probably isn't.” 

Tyrion pauses and gives her an unreadable glance that tugs at her heart so she dives back into the pillows, dragging him along with her. Afterwards he runs his hands over her body like he often wants to; he's mapping her out, she thinks, marking her. 

“You never speak of your father,” he observes. 

“No.”

She talks a lot but she never speaks of herself. He usually doesn't seem to mind; at times she wonders if he even notices. He probably thinks he does. 

“So,” she murmurs, her lips against his chest that rises and falls beneath her. “If your father is so terrifying, why are you bringing me to court against his will?”

Tyrion is quiet for a long time.

“Because I can't bear the thought of court without your wicked mouth there to keep me entertained,” he says after a while and cannot make it sound as a jape even if he tries.

*

She writes to Moira from court. _The weather is terrible_ , she writes, mentioning the signs of winter. She does not mention the weddings she attends or the high-born lady she is now a maid to.

 _I fill my little box with gold_ , she writes. She does not write about court or the other women there, how they giggle behind her back as she hesitates before things that are in their blood; she gets her skirts caught in doors and her hands cut on sharp angles and she stumbles, teeth gritted and hand clenched. 

“Don't laugh at me,” Tyrion says – pleads or commands depending on his mood – as he comes for her in the nights. 

Shae kisses him, kisses his mouth and chest and cock, thinking _everyone laughs at a whore, my lord_ , but she never does tell him. 

“I love you,” he says sometimes in his softest voice, no more than a whisper. 

She knows that he means it; she knows that he believes her too, when she returns the phrase to him, the words a little bent in her mouth, but the weight of them the same as they fall on his skin and he takes them, unquestioning. 

He thinks he is different from the other men who have bought her cunt, different from the numbers at the back of her mind, as though he can mask the deeds behind his crimson and gold. 

He thinks he is different; she knows that she is not. This, more than gold and castles and fathers is what sets them apart.

*

There are two guards who take turns with her for a whole night, calling her different names every time; there is an old, sad man in a filthy inn along the road who weeps in her arms ( _oh Leandra, forgive me_ ) and doesn't have any gold when he is done so Shae steals a necklace from his bedside table when he has fallen asleep; there is a Lannister soldier, short and lean and handsome who wants her to call him _Kingslayer_ and she does, keeping a straight face; there is another Lannister soldier, big and harsh-looking and surprisingly gentle, mapping the line of her jaw with his calloused thumb, saying _you look just like her_ and the amazement in his voice almost makes her smile.

There is a queen, grieving but soft-spoken and she offers her the whole world. 

“I will not let any harm come to you, if you do as I say,” she promises; her cruelty is honest, open, nothing like Tyrion's. 

Shae nods.

*

Afterwards, she lets the wine wash her thoughts in the solitude of what used to be Tyrion's bedchamber. If she closes her eyes, she can see the judges whirl around inside her mind, their faces stern and serious as she tells her story. And it's simple, it's a dance she knows, a game she can play just as well as the high lords and ladies on their thrones and gilded seats.

Today, they had not laughed at _her_. 

Shae can feel his presence before she turns her head to look at the visitor. “Why are you here?”

“Because I believe you are the sort of girl one could go to and ask for a favour.” The eunuch remains in the doorway. “The sort of girl who lies to judges.”

Shae downs the rest of her wine. 

Perhaps she says _no, no I am not her_ ; perhaps she says nothing. 

In end end, it doesn't matter.

*

In the end the chain is cold around her throat, the imp's breath sour and bitter like her father's as it falls on her bare skin.

She thinks of her gold, of everything he never took from her, everything she is yet to have; she thinks of Moira's kind face and soothing hands and she closes her eyes thinking of the inn somewhere in the Riverlands where she would have been just Shae and nobody else ever again. _Do not weep for me, Moira_ , she thinks as the metal cuts into her skin and she gasps, her breath catching. 

In the end, she is just Shae and they throw her body out with the rest of the garbage when it's found.


End file.
